Despite the convenience of online faculty evaluations, student response to these surveys has taken a dip since going digital.
Faculty evaluations, which UF offers solely online this semester, are open, but data from Summer 2011 indicates that student feedback decreased about 20 percent with the digital switch.
However, students who did complete evaluations provided enhanced comments, and the online system saved the university time and money.
The overall student response rate for Summer 2011, which was the first semester students submitted all faculty evaluations online, was about 33 percent. When students completed all evaluations on paper in Summer 2010, the overall response rate was about 53 percent, said Donna Johnson, UF evaluations coordinator.
"The response rates have dropped, but it was not unexpected," Johnson said. "That has been the experience of other universities that have gone online."
Although there has been a drop in student response rates, Johnson said the electronic word counts are significantly higher than the written word counts because students have more time to consider their responses. Moreover, students complete evaluations at their own convenience, she said.
Because of the online system, UF saved a total of $320,000 during the summer of 2011 and an average of 89 hours administering and logging evaluations per department, Johnson said.
Despite the benefits, UF faced a challenge this semester in increasing student response rates.
Barbara Gross Davis, author of "Tools for Teaching," a book that assesses the importance of student feedback, said universities across the nation are putting an emphasis on evaluations due to current scrutiny and concern about higher education.
"The public is concerned about the costs of higher education, the value of higher education and the quality of higher education," Davis said.
Regardless of how proactive UF is in relaying to students the weight of evaluations, the digital switch places the responsibility on students, Johnson said.
"We are now depending on students to believe in the importance of evaluations and contribute to the process," she said.
